SANDRA CONVREY spoke out about her husband's ordeal after the Record exposed a series of horror stories about patients being left on trolleys in Scots hospitals.

Sandra believes her husband would still be alive if he'd been in a proper ward

WIDOW Sandra Convrey believes her man would still be with her if he had not been left for 11 hours on a trolley in accident and emergency.

Sandra told yesterday how William, 66, phoned her every hour during his ordeal to tell her he was still waiting to be given a bed.

And she said: “What my man went through was diabolical.

“He lay in A&E all that time. Nobody can tell me that’s right.

“That man should still be here. If he had got a proper ward he would still be here.

“We should have been celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary at Christmas.

“I have lost everything. He was my world.”

Sandra spoke out after the Record exposed a series of horror stories about patients being left on trolleys for hours on end in Scots hospitals.

We told how frail widower John McGarrity, 84, was left on a trolley in a freezing corridor for eight hours after being taken to Glasgow’s Western Infirmary with chest pains.

Health Secretary Alex Neil said John’s ordeal was not a true reflection on the NHS, but nurses told us such scenes were commonplace in hard-pressed A&E units.

William, of Turriff, Aberdeenshire, was taken to A&E at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary last November after complaining of a pain in his side.

He’d had heart surgery a few weeks earlier but Sandra claims the op nothing to do with his death. He was due to retire this month from his job as a council gardener.

She said that from 10.30am to 9.30pm, William called her every hour on the hour from the hospital to say he was still on the trolley.

Newsline Scotland

Sandra Convrey's husband William was waiting for treatment and died in ARI

Sandra, a mother of three, added: “He lay all day and all evening on a trolley on the ward.

“He was in absolute agony. It would have been quite obvious to everyone that he was in pain.

“I said I was going to come in and sit with him. But he said, ‘Don’t come in tonight, come tomorrow’, because there was nowhere for me to sit.”

Sandra said she went to bed when William was finally given a room at 9.30pm and seen by a doctor.

But at 9am on November 20, the hospital phoned to say his condition had worsened and she should come in immediately.

Frantic Sandra, who has suffered a series of strokes, arranged for her sister-in-law to drive her the 35 miles to the hospital. But William was dead by the time they arrived.

Sandra Convrey's her husband's treatment was diabolical

Sandra said: “I was too late. His hands were like claws and his eyes were wide. I’ll never forget it.

“The curtain had been pulled around but you could see in. There were people in beds either side of him.

“Next thing I knew, a doctor had the death certificate in my face asking me to sign it. It wasn’t until weeks later that I started to absorb what had happened.”

Sandra said she refused a post mortem because William hated operations, but now regrets her decision.

She has sent a letter of complaint to NHS Grampian demanding answers over her husband’s treatment, and has even considered requesting a post mortem if she is not satisfied with their response.

Sandra said: “I’m so angry and I don’t want this to happen to anybody else.”

NHS Grampian said Sandra’s complaint would be dealt with when it arrived. A spokeswoman added: “We take every complaint made against us very seriously, and each one is thoroughly investigated.”

Labour: Buck your ideas up, minister

LABOUR have told Health Secretary Alex Neil to get a grip on Scotland’s under-pressure NHS.

Health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie told Neil, to shake off his “complacent attitude”, and accused him of “inaction” over the problems.

Jackie Baillie

She highlighted doctors’ concerns over SNP plans to abolish multi-bed wards in new hospitals, and noted claims that the NHS is wasting £100million a year with 13 per cent of hospitals underused or empty.

She also noted that some patients were being forced to wait eight months for scans.

Baillie claimed: “Every week brings more bad news for the NHS and more inaction from Alex Neil.

“Last week, Alex Neil revealed his complacent attitude to the NHS – that “something is bound to go wrong from time to time”.

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